GEMS OF MADHYA PRADESH MINISTRY

Some Ministers dazzle MP with their brilliance

NK SINGH

Alice was lost in wonderland. Kusum Singh Mahdele is lost in Twitterland. You may not have heard of the lady. She is a senior cabinet minister in Madhya Pradesh Government. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice to use social media, she has taken to twitter like a duck to water. She is a natural. Often irreverent, never boring, she gives as good as she gets.

Once the minister informed a polling site that its questions were “idiotic”. After she received flak for mistakenly congratulating fellow politician Kailash Vijaywargiya for getting Nobel Peace Prize, she brazenly tweeted: “What has Kailash Satyarthi done for MP’s children? Even children here do not know.” It is a pity that her twitter handle, @ikusummahdele, has only 855 followers, for she is, frequently, vastly entertaining.

Mahdele, BSc, LLB, expresses her opinion on everything under the sun, from politics to diplomacy and from Mother’s Day to videos loaded on YouTube. The problem is that she rarely tweets about her ministry or work, the primary intention behind the Prime Minister’s advice to public servants to use social media. That, however, does not diminish the value of her tweets. Several of her 600 and odd tweets on the three-year-old handle are quite newsy. Last month she tweeted: “All help to Kashmir should be stopped.”

Last week, Mahdele’s handle was in news. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari boasted on tweeter, tagging the PM, about commitment to build world class infrastructure, highlighting that this year the Government was constructing 22.6 km of highways everyday as against the average of 16.6 km last year. Within four hours Mahdele was in Twitterland, with her reply to both Gadkari and Modi, tagging along BJP. The minister tweeted about bad roads in the State: “Satna to Panna, Panna to Chhatarpur, Rewa to Satna highways in bad shape. Road from Khajurao to Lavkushnagar not motorable. Please order to repair it soon.” The highways are indeed in a horrible condition.

Mahdele rushes in where lesser politicians would fear to tread. A favourite target of her seems to be Indian Railways. She keeps tweeting about lack of toilet paper, dirty and foul smelling blankets, thin and “useless” pillows, food quality, frequent theft and lack of safety for lady passengers. She is peeved about “third class sitting arrangement” in newly launched Mahamana Express, comparing it to “seven hour torture”.  She does not spare even her boss, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. She tweeted last June: “I did not like the transfer of honest and good Collector of Panna, who had acted against sand mafia.” Panna is the minister’s home district.

Mahdele is not the only gem in Shivraj cabinet. There are many others, dazzling people with their brilliance. Surya Prakash Meena, another member of Chouhan ministry, is a commerce graduate. Recently he participated in a government initiative where ‘eminent’ personalities teach school children for a day, amidst media glare. At a school he visited in his home district, Vidisha, to impart knowledge to children, the honourable minister was asked the full form of ‘MLA’. Meena, who has been a member of legislative assembly since 2008, thought hard and answered: “Member of Legislative Administration.” Last time he was in news when his department sent his son and nephew on junket to Netherland to learn floriculture – at tax payers’ expense.

Many roads in the State are awful. Bhopal MLA Rameshwar Sharma started filling up potholes in his constituency with stones and mud. Asked to explain reasons behind the sorry state of affair, PWD Minister Rampal Singh said, without batting an eyelid: “We have kept some of the roads in bad condition so that it reminds people of Congress rule.”

Lal Singh Arya, Minister of State for GAD, is an accused in a murder case in Bhind, his home district. He moved even the Supreme Court for relief. But the highest court in the land refused to intervene. Yet the murder accused continues in the ministry.

Agriculture Minister Gaurishankar Bisen, 65, is often in news for wrong reasons. He hogged international headlines when he gifted washing bats to 700 brides at a mass wedding, advising them to use it against their husbands if they drink. Not long ago, a deputy registrar of cooperative said in her judgement that he had tried to influence her in the case in favour of a corruption accused.

A few years ago, Bisen got an executive engineer arrested from his official bungalow at Bhopal for allegedly trying to bribe him. Police also seized Rs five lakh in cash from the spot. But, recently, when the case landed in court, the minister refused to recognise the engineer! He continues to be part of Shivraj Singh ministry since 2008. Not surprising since Bisen has publicly declared that Chouhan “is an incarnation of god”. And gods always come to rescue of their devotees, don’t they?

My column, Powers That Be, in DB Post of 4th Sept 17

Email: nksexpress@gmail.com, Twets @nksexpress.